Thanksgiving Weekend Melee in San Bernardino: Dozens of Cops Respond to House Party as Guests Hit 'em With Rocks, Bottles

A football-viewing house party in San Bernardino ended in madness when a guest who walked into the street was hit by a car and responding cops were ultimately pelted with rocks and bottles by revelers, police tell the Weekly.

Cue the banjo music. It all happened ...

... in the 1500 block of West Fifth Street about 7:45 Saturday night, according to the San Bernardino Sun. That's old Route 66 (and, yeah, somebody got their kicks).

The paper says 34 cops from surrounding agencies, including Rialto Police and the California Highway Patrol, had to help San Bernardino city officers control the crowd.

San Bernardino PD Lt. Gwendolyn Waters tells us it went down like this (allegedly):

-Somebody from that party walked out into traffic holding a child and was hit by a car. It was not the fault of the driver. It was the fault of the pedestrian.

-Officers came on-scene to investigate. None of the injuries was expected to be life-threatening.

-As they were doing a full-on thorough investigation of the accident, some of the family members initially were challenging the driver even though it wasn't his fault.

-The officers got that situation calmed down.

But ...

One individual in particular kept walking out into the street and trying to pick things up in the street. Officers repeatedly asked him to stay out of the street ... for a half hour. Finally they went to arrest him for being intoxicated in public.

And ...

As an officer was handcufing that individual, a female from the party ran toward the officer's back ... An officer struck her to stop her. She was arrested for assault on a police officer and obstructing an officer in line of duty.

Then ...

Another male subject also ran toward the officer. He was then arrested as well.

Bad move. Finally ...

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-The crowd then started throwing rocks and bottles at the officers. Quite a few of our officers came in to control that scene.

Three people were arrested including the man and woman for allegedly assaulting officers and the guy who was accused of being drunk in public, Waters said. The female suspect was looked over at a hospital after a cop had to use force to stop her, she said. Otherwise there were no other injuries reported.

Now, friends, that's a party. (And surely it will provide warm memories and tales of Thanksgiving Weekend 2011 that will last for generations to come).

Dennis Romero is an L.A. Weekly staff writer. He formerly worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times, where he participated in Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the L.A. riots. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone online, the Guardian and, as a young stringer, the New York Times.